NEW DELHI: Overall hiring sentiment for the first half of this fiscal suffered a decline of 6 percentage points as sentiment for small businesses remained down, while large businesses are looking to hire more, says a survey.

According to TeamLease Employment Outlook Report 2017-18, entry and mid-level hiring saw a fall of 8 and 5 points respectively, while the senior-level hiring witnessed a 5 point boost.

"Given the government's initiative of driving digitisation, especially for the small and medium enterprises, one can expect the hiring outlook to improve significantly for the other half of the year," TeamLease Services Executive Vice-President and co-founder Rituparna Chakraborty said.

Fintech and mobile wallet companies have bullish hiring plans, while pharma businesses are set to scale up as significant foreign investments are being planned by large Indian MNC pharma majors.

The KPO industry is also showing robust growth and is poised to add close to 150,000 professionals to its payrolls during the coming financial year.

Meanwhile, construction and real estate are the worst-hit sectors due to demonetisation and the hiring sentiment in them plunged to a new low.

Manufacturing, Engineering and Infrastructure are not intent on hiring either. Hiring is set to slow significantly in FMCG, FMCD, BPO/ITeS and Power & Energy and marginally in Travel & Hospitality, Agriculture & Agrochemicals and Educational Services.

The bi-annual report provides a comprehensive overview of the mechanics of hiring, job growth, salaries and their drivers, trends and forecasts across eight cities and 16 sectors in India.